Sometimes I’m blessed with the most amazing sights outside my kitchen window: flocks grazing; chickens running to and fro; turkeys displaying their spring splendor, trying to impress their mates.

Lately I’ve been letting the flock stay out later, the afternoon sun warming their backs as they graze those last bits of lush green pasture before getting locked safely into their pen for the night. They meander up when the time is right, some kind of biological clock telling them the long day is over and that it’s time for a warm bed of hay and rest.

On one night in particular, the girls headed straight for their favorite spots, all in a row, one by one. They reminded me of elephants walking head to tail, each one holding onto the tail in front of her. Behind them were the six lambs, following along as if they, too, knew it was time. The moms began settling in nicely, easing themselves into wind-down mode. Suddenly, as if someone turned on a switch, all six lambs did a 360 and raced right back out of the pen. They ran to one side and just stood there, bunched up and leaning against one another, and I swear they were smiling. Then, from a completely still position, the two biggest ones leaped straight in the air, did a half nelson, and landed back down with very pleased looks on their faces. Like a bunch of 5-year-olds, they stood there as if to say, “We’re not ready for bed yet.”

All I could think of was the times when, as mothers, we’ve called our kids to come in from playing in the garden and have gotten the “Oh, Mom, just five more minutes” reply. I might have thought it was time to close the gate, but the babes had other plans. As I approached, they took off like a shot, ran down the pasture, did a complete once-around and then headed straight for the pen. Neither I nor their moms were in charge. “Teenagers,” I said to myself. “They’re like a pack of adolescents, feeling their oats.”

Once the babes were back in the pen, each one found its mama and then, when and only when they were ready, they started settling down. I’ve been told before that, when you’re around animals long enough, you’ll come to learn that you’re not actually the boss. For me, giving up control is a good thing. I’ve always thought I was in charge, but farming has taught me otherwise. Once again I’m reminded that I’m there to keep them safe and to tend them, to feed them and to enjoy them, but really, they have their own nature. I’m learning to respect that and allow them to be, well, sheep. More than that, I’m learning to enjoy it.

I had a great experience recently in selling my first lamb, a sweet black ram who went to live on a farm in Houlton, Maine. I’m not a life-long Mainer, and I’m still learning how big this state is. When I got a call from a gentleman who wanted a black ram for wool, I asked him where he was. Houlton, he said. Since my trips generally keep me within a 50-mile radius of the midcoast, I had no idea where that was. Almost to Canada, he told me.

I was intrigued—and a little leery of how we were going to connect from there to here. He told me he is 80 years old, still farming, and has an all-black flock. We planned to meet at noon on a Saturday in Searsport to make the exchange. At 1:30 I was still waiting and feared he had gotten lost somewhere along the way. As I sat in my Volvo wagon with the babe quietly munching on hay in the back, I began to have reservations about selling this little one. The man had admitted he was getting up there in age, didn’t get around too well, and, frankly, seemed a little confused about things. But when he arrived, my reservations vanished.

He was upset that he was so late and that I had been waiting so long. He had gone the wrong route and stopped several times to ask the way before finally figuring it out. Turns out someone gave him the wrong directions, or maybe he heard them wrong. Doesn’t matter. The way he put it was: “I don’t think most people know where they are on this earth.” He was wearing—I swear—a starched pair of jeans. I know they were a lot cleaner than mine, with big suspenders holding them up. His big farmer hands rested on the steering wheel of the pickup as we talked for a few minutes, and then he made out a check for the babe. He brought out a big wooden box, a beautiful thing someone had made for him to transport a pig. He also brought a blanket to cover the lamb, “in case the wind was too cold.” He said he didn’t want the little guy to get the sniffles.

I almost cried. I did on the way home.

People amaze me. There is gentleness in this world and goodwill. I was sitting there, annoyed that my carefully planned day was getting taken up with delivering this lamb to a man who couldn’t find his way out of Houlton. Now I’m just grateful this lamb found a home with a man with gentle hands, a farmer who will tend this little guy as he becomes a daddy to his own flocks. We parted with the man inviting me to come visit. He said he’d even clean up the house. I told him that, when the season was over and before the flakes flew, I’d try to do just that.

I feel so lucky when I meet the greatest people and they happen to be farmers. I wish that everyone, human and animal, could have warm blankets to keep the sniffles away and somebody’s big, warm hands to guide them through life. In the meantime, I’m going to keep glancing out my kitchen window at my own peaceable kingdom—a partnership of the simplest kind and one I’m happy to enjoy.

Dyan Redick describes herself as “an accidental farmer with a purpose.” Her farm, located on the St. George peninsula of Maine, is a certified Maine State Dairy offering cheeses made with milk from a registered Saanen goat herd, a seasonal farm stand full of wool from a Romney cross flock, goat milk soap, lavender, woolens, and whatever else strikes Dyan’s fancy. Bittersweet Heritage Farm is an extension of her belief that we should all gain a better understanding of our food source, our connection to where we live, and to the animals with whom we share the earth.

ALL PHOTOS: BITTERSWEET HERITAGE FARM

The post HOMEGROWN Life: Giving Up Control appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.

BY TONI TIEMANN  A few of us from the HOMEGROWN/Farm Aid team had the opportunity to get our elbows dirty at a recent workshop on composting with coffee at Counter Culture’s Boston-area training facility. Everett Hoffman of Bootstrap Compost, a local start-up that picks up food scraps from commercial and residential customers and turns them into compost, was on hand to lend his know-how. 

Bootstrap’s Everett Hoffman and Counter Culture’s Jake Robinson

Everett went to Skidmore College with dreams of becoming a carpenter but decided to enter the world of composting after hearing Will Allen of Growing Power speak at an urban agriculture meeting. “It’s creative and artistic,” Everett says of compost. “You are literally making something from what you would have thrown away.” Since I’m not an experienced composter, I sat down with Everett after the workshop to get the lowdown on composting basics, plus tips on what to compost, including some surprises.

1. Balance your nitrogen and carbon levels. Compost should maintain a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 30:1, although this formula can vary, depending on what the compost will be used for. Typically, for the right molecular balance, you want three “brown” materials for every “green” one. Brown materials, like leaves and sticks, are high in carbon, whereas green ones, like most vegetable scraps, have a higher nitrogen content. 

This gets tricky with substances like coffee that look brown but act green. Similarly, grass is high in nitrogen when it’s green and growing but builds greater carbon content as it dries out. One way to determine if your compost is balanced is by its smell. If the compost smells bad, you’ve got too much nitrogen and need more carbon. Solution: Add more twigs or leaves. And if the pile isn’t decomposing, it’s probably lacking nitrogen, which you can fix by adding more food scraps. 

2. Know what you’re brewing: fungal- versus bacterial-dominant compost. There are two types of compost: fungal- and bacterial-dominant. Fungal compost works over a long period of time and is most effective for growing shrubs and trees. Bacterium, on the other hand, isn’t capable of breaking down wood on its own. Bacterial-dominant compost works best in a garden environment because it has a higher level of nitrogen, a crucial element for growing tomatoes and veggies.

3. Give your compost enough water and air. “There are more microorganisms in this handful of compost than there are stars in our galaxy,” Everett said as he lifted a handful of compost at the coffee workshop. Just as humans and plants need water and air to survive, so do the microorganisms in compost. The perfect compost should leave your hand moist, but not dripping wet, when you squeeze it.

You also want to keep an eye on the density of your compost pile. Compost needs rigid materials like twigs or wood chips to create space for air to circulate throughout. Compost can reach temperatures of up to 160 degrees, and the microbes need to be able to breathe when the temp starts to rise. Those rigid materials also help encourage an even distribution of water, like stones in a brook.

So, now that we know the basic principles, what can we compost? Old shower loofahs? Leather? Feathers? Elmer’s glue? Everett’s mantra: “It’s not waste unless we call it waste.” He shared the dirt on six things you can compost—but might not be.

Toni (right, with Jake) prepares to plant bean seeds in compost-rich soil

1. Coffee. Everett says people across the globe throw away 20 million tons of coffee grounds each year, so compost is a great way to reduce that waste. Coffee makes a good addition to compost because it’s 2 percent nitrogen by volume, a relatively high concentration that aids plants in the natural process of creating chlorophyll.

2. Hair. From both humans and pets, for that matter. Hair is a source of nitrogen and is nonputrescible—good word, huh?—meaning it doesn’t smell bad quickly. Hair is similar to a substance like fish guts, which also provides a high amount of nitrogen but is putrescible.

3. Shells/mollusks. Because a shell takes a long time to decompose, it adds a long-term supply of valuable calcium as it breaks down.

4. No. 6 plastics. Any plastic with “PLA” embossed on its bottom is no. 6 plastic, meaning it can be composted in a professional facility. Companies like Vegware and NatureWorks recently started manufacturing cups and other products made from this corn-based plastic.

5. Dryer lint. Most lint found in the dryer comes from cotton, which is a plant, making it compostable. Lint typically has a higher concentration of carbon than nitrogen, but it contains both.

6. Humanure. Humanure is basically what it sounds like: manure made from human fecal matter. (Go ahead and take a minute to digest that one.) Humanure is not readily compostable on its own and requires a special composting toilet. Once it has been processed through the composting toilet, the remaining feces can be blended with a substance, such as wood chips, and used to grow mushrooms. The mushrooms remove any pathogens from the humanure, and the remnants then can be used like typical compost.

Don’t want to recycle your poop? Don’t sweat it. There are plenty of other things to compost, and doing so is a great first step in living a more sustainable life. In fact, Everett says, Americans throw out a staggering amount of food every day, enough to fill an entire football stadium. Most of this waste is sent to landfills where it produces a tremendous amount of methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.

Although composting may seem like a small act for a single person, Everett sees it as the beginning of a bigger movement for change. “The way that we feel affects the way that we think, and the way that we think affects everything,” he says.

MORE FROM HOMEGROWN

• See HOMEGROWN 101s on composting and making compost tea

• Check out HOMEGROWN member Karin’s blog post for suggestions on where to get free compostable coffee grounds

Toni is a second year student at Northeastern University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in music industry. Having grown up on a farm in Upstate New York, she is completing her first co-op at Farm Aid and is very eager to learn more about modern farming practices. Toni has a passion for live music, hiking, creative writing, and cooking.

The post 3 Rules for Composting (Plus, 6 Things You Might Not Be Composting But Could) appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.

Raising livestock can be very rewarding. You get to build this intimate relationship with the creatures that provide your food. You take a great deal of care in their raising because you want them to be healthy and happy. The healthier and happier they are, the better the food they produce for you will be.

On the other side of the coin, sometimes, no matter how well you care for them, you’ll end up losing livestock. For whatever reason, they may give up before you do, and once they do, there really is nothing you can do to save them. Mindy was my biggest heartbreak. I still get teary-eyed when I think about her.

For those who are new to reading the blog, two years ago we got to help Bella kid Mork and Mindy. It was the first kidding we’d ever had here—or even attended, for that matter. When they were born, Mork was up and at ‘em immediately. His sister, however, was not. She nursed right away, lying down next to Bella, but other than that, she was very slow to stand.

From then on, she was never quite right. The kidding coincided with a huge storm and what ended up being one of the wettest, longest winters I can remember. Very quickly she got coccidiosis, which we treated, only for it to come back again soon after. When we finally knocked it down all the way, she got in a good week of normalcy. It just so happened that was the week we had a photographer here for a book, and there were some amazingly cute photos of her playing.

But the healthy week was short lived. She started to show signs of goat polio, and off to the vet she went. The vet had us give her vitamin B1 shots for three days, but when that was up, we didn’t see any improvement—and now she was wheezing.

Pneumonia is particularly dangerous in goats. The vet put her on some strong antibiotics, and at first she seemed to be improving. But then she crashed. Really fast. She was fine in the morning, and then that afternoon we came home to find her unable to keep her balance, wheezing heavily, eyes bulging. We were sent to UC Davis, where they confirmed that she had not only pneumonia but also encephalitis of unknown origin. She wasn’t going to improve, so we had to let her go. It’s amazing how such a small little creature can get into your heart so quickly.

Since she was from our very first kidding, losing her also made me really nervous. In the back of my mind, I had this fear that doelings were just too fragile. Daisy’s buckling, Mongo, and Mork were big, strapping kids and incredibly healthy. But Mindy, our one and only doeling, couldn’t make it past a few weeks. Bailey proved me wrong, and she’s definitely eased my fears, however irrational they may be.

Sometimes, though, they continue to fight. As many of you know, Hank, my tom turkey, is one of my favorites around here. I came home from work one afternoon a couple of months ago to find him stumbling and completely off balance. He also appeared to have lost sight in one of his eyes. I was completely freaked out. We don’t have any poultry vets around here, so the first thing I did was email Clare to get some advice. She really helped, and I can’t thank her enough.

Unfortunately, it was unclear what was causing the issue. After looking up various poultry sites, it seemed that maybe he had a mineral or vitamin deficiency. Fortunately, he was eating and drinking fine, as long as he could stay standing upright, so I was able to give him some extra supplements. But after a few days and no improvement, I had to look elsewhere. In the meantime, he seemed to be getting worse. His vision in the other eye was questionable, and Tom was feeling like it might be time to put Hank down. The photo of him above was taken just a couple of days before he fell ill, and I was scared that it would be the last one I would have of him. I stood there in the yard, holding him up and crying. I just wasn’t ready to let him go yet.

I finally decided to use antibiotics. I’m not one to use them on a whim, so it took a lot of thought to decide to go this route. Clare gave me some advice on the length of treatment, so I put him on the patio (it seemed to offer him better footing) in his own pen and makeshift coop and started him on antibiotics. Within a few days, the improvement was noticeable. After 10 days, he gobbled at me. By the end of the round, he was strutting and calling for his ladies. He’s now back with everyone and soon to be a dad again. I’m glad we fought for him, since he was still willing to fight.

My friends in college used to call me a Renaissance woman. I was always doing something crafty, creative, or utilitarian. I still am. My focus these days, instead of arts and crafts, has been farming as much of my urban quarter-acre as humanly possible. Along with my husband, I run Dog Island Farm, in the SF Bay Area. We raise chickens, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, and a kid. We’re always keeping busy. If I’m not out in the yard, I’m in the kitchen making something from scratch. Homemade always tastes better!

ALL PHOTOS: COURTESY OF RACHEL

The post HOMEGROWN Life: Sometimes They Break Your Heart appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.

Yep, spring means asparagus and rhubarb and lettuce and morel mushrooms—all good things we love, for sure. But for folks in California, spring brings yet another seasonal treat: Maker Faire Bay Area, aka “the Greatest Show and Tell on Earth.”

For those not familiar with Maker Faire, it’s sort of like heaven for do-it-yourselfers, a ginormous festival of all things sawed, hammered, pasted, programmed—and preserved. For the past four years, HOMEGROWN and our big sibling, Farm Aid, have partnered with Maker Faire to present the HOMEGROWN Village, a curated corral devoted to food making, urban homesteading, farming, gardening, harvesting, cooking, and eating. Most definitely eating.

We can’t wait to return to the San Mateo County Event Center on May 18 and 19 for the HOMEGROWN Village’s fifth year at Maker Faire, and we can’t wait to see you there. Whether you live in the Bay Area or are considering making the hike (Do it! Do it!), whet your appetite below. This year’s HOMEGROWN Village comprises four mouth-watering areas, and we’re pleased as punch to point out how many HOMEGROWN members are involved.

NEW THIS YEAR! EDIBLE MARKETPLACE
Curated by Forage Kitchen, a food-focused hacker space in San Francisco, the Edible Marketplace features small-scale food makers, including Bar Jars, Cocoa Collection SF, Happy Girl Kitchen, McVicker Pickles, Oaktown Jerk, Sweet Lauren Cakes, T-We Tea, and more. Are you hungry yet?

NEW THIS YEAR! FARM & FOOD FILM FEST
Once you’ve picked up a tea-and-pickle snack, head to this screening area for short films on food literacy, sustainability, soil health, farming, and feeding ourselves.

» Let’s hear it for the HOME team! HOMEGROWN member Kala Philo presents FarmShorts, a new web video initiative

» Also from the HOME front: HOMEGROWN member Kristi Stephens Adams presents selections from her documentary shorts series From the Ground Up

» Director in attendance! Don’t miss Symphony of the Soil, featuring a Q&A with filmmaker and environmentalist Deborah Koons Garcia (The Future of Food)

» The award-winning film Nourish: Food + Community traces how food connects to climate change, public health, and social justice

» Also from PBS: Food Forward, a new breed of food TV

» And from VOM Productions: Udderly Direct, a short doc on a raw milk dairy farm near Fresno

MAKER STAGE
Here’s where you can learn stuff directly from other smart folks. Think of it as a buffet for the brain.

» Hey-yo! Another HOMEGROWN member! Nicole Easterday of FarmCurious hosts not one but two talks: Making Fresh Chevre and Making & Infusing Vinegars

» And another! HOMEGROWN member Keri Keifer and her fellow Seedfolks spill the beans—er, seeds—on seed saving

» Lloyd Kahn, author and editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications (as in Tiny Homes!), gives a talk on the Half-Acre Homestead

» More! More! More! Pickling Oddities: Beyond Vinegar & Kraut, from Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It‘s Karen Solomon

» Lamb Butchering, with Berry Smith Salinas of Sonoma County’s Meat Revolution

» Waffleology: A Scientific Approach to Delicious Waffles, with Sivan Wilensky of San Francisco’s Suite Foods Bakery

HANDS-ON HOMEGROWN WORKSHOPS
You’ve had a snack—or three. You’ve watched a film. You’ve heard a talk. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get your fingernails dirty. This year’s hands-on demos include:

» Making Your Own Moldy Cheese, with San Francisco’s The Milk Maid

» Making Kimchi at Home, with Farm to Fermentation Festival’s Jennifer Harris

» Kraut-a-thon: Making Kraut at Home, with Happy Girl Kitchen

» Shrubbin’ It: Tart & Tangy Cocktail Mixers and Make Your Own Mustard, with Kelly McVicker of McVicker Pickles

» And last but (ahem) not least, Butter: Shake It! Make It! and Seedbombs: The Throwable Garden! with yours truly, HOMEGROWN.org

Have we convinced you? Good! Here’s the fine print: Maker Faire Bay Area runs Saturday, May 18 from 10 am to 8 pm and Sunday, May 19 from 10 am to 6 pm at the San Mateo County Event Center, 1346 Saratoga Drive, San Mateo, California. Admission is $10 to $35; kids 3 and under get in free—and yep, Maker Faire is absolutely kid friendly. Get tickets.

PHOTOS: (SIGNPOSTS) COURTESY OF MAKER FAIRE; (ALL OTHERS) CORNELIA

The post Homeward Bound! HOMEGROWN Village Returns to Maker Faire Bay Area appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.

This month I’m writing to my HOMEGROWN friends about the ominous tale of what could have been.

I could have written about happy things.

I could have written about morel mushroom season, one of life’s glorious pleasures.

I could have written about our booming garden produce. We’re harvesting small volumes of mixed salad greens, spinach, turnips, mixed mustards, brassicas for braising, and beautiful radishes.

I could have written about the continued love-hate relationship I have with my goat herd, the goats having broken into our house one Saturday while we were out on the soccer field. They broke a lot of stuff, including lamps, coffee mugs, various canned goods, my son’s favorite illustrated poster of Greek deities, dozens of house plants, a prized National Geographic poster from the former Soviet Union, my sons’ taxonomy project (two months in the making), and much more. They got on both boys’ beds and tracked up their bedclothes with mud and manure and fur. Well, this wasn’t funny at the time, but in hindsight I suppose I can laugh about it.

But instead I’m going to write about a more serious matter that has reared its head on the western Missouri plains. Big oil is expanding, and it has me and many others in my small community deeply concerned.

You’ve probably heard about the fight against TransCanada and their Keystone XL Pipeline proposal from Northern Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico. The Keystone XL Pipeline would be carrying some of the most toxic and polluting oil on Earth, made by destroying Canada’s boreal forest in the Tar Sands region. The Tar Sands oil project has been called “game over for the climate” by NASA’s pre-eminent climate scientist, James Hansen. Climate activists, including 350.org and many others, have thus far been able to delay construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline since it crosses international borders, and the president/State Department has to sign off on it. It’s a great story about citizens fighting back against environmental destruction from the oil companies and winning—at least for now.

Enter our local situation, and the Enbridge Flanagan South Pipeline. This proposed pipeline is actually Enbridge’s play as the alternative to Keystone XL. It is being done with a lower profile, more piecemeal approach. So far it has gotten very little public scrutiny. We’re hoping our little group of concerned citizens can help change that.

We live in a rural community in West Missouri that has invested millions of dollars to improve the cleanliness of our public water infrastructure and to upgrade our it. The proposed Flanagan South pipeline would carry highly toxic diluted bitumen through it, and that pipeline crosses one mile from the water intake of our local water supply. There are other towns along the route facing similar risks.

And while this fight is about the destruction of the climate and Northern Canadian tar sands development, it’s also a local fight about the risks associated with toxic oil coming through a pipeline that could rupture and foul our water and local ecology. Here are some concerns we’ve discovered about diluted bitumen, which the oil industry refers to as “dilbit,” as we’ve learned about the project:

• Dilbit contains benzene, mixed hydrocarbons, and n-hexane. All three are toxins that can affect the human brain and central nervous system.

• Dilbit contains hydrogen sulfide gas. Hydrogen sulfide can cause suffocation in humans in concentrations over 100 parts per million. This is a serious risk to workers breathing in vapors from the chemical mixture.

• Dilbit contains many toxic heavy metals that do not break down in the environment. Vanadium, nickel, arsenic, and other heavy metals can accumulate and cause toxicity in plants, wildlife, and people.

• Dilbit’s characteristics make it very different than conventional petroleum, therefore it operates very differently than conventional oil as it flows through the pipeline. Dilbit has much higher acidity, viscosity, sulfur content, pipeline temperature, and pipeline pressure than conventional oil pipelines. Dilbit also contains higher rates of flow per second of quartz and silicates than commercial sand blasters. These factors create concerns regarding pipeline spill risks.

• Unlike conventional oil, dilbit does not float when it spills into water. Dilbit sinks, making surface water containment strategies ineffective.

• Despite industry promises of safety and pipeline integrity, spills happen. Often. In fact, there are more than 100 petrochemical spills every year, flowing toxic poisons into our forests, fields, waterways, and communities.

• If you’ve read or heard about the recent dilbit spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, or the destructive pipeline that burst along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan a couple of summers ago, both spills were pipeline ruptures involving dilbit.

• To top off the risks of the pipeline operations, there is very little legislation or regulatory framework that we’ve found that addresses these concerns. Pipeline development, contrary to the popular imagination, is exempt from most national and local environmental standards. Even if they wanted to (and, yes, that’s a questionable proposition), the EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources could do very little about this proposed pipeline. Instead, pipeline permits and inspections are governed by the Department of Transportation, which only requires inspections every six years.

So what’s going to happen? I don’t know. This is one of those situations where locals are shocked when they hear about what’s coming through our region—and yet, there has been almost no public information about the proposed Flanagan South Pipeline. We’re trying to change that. So stay tuned. There might be something interesting to tell in future months. Wish us luck, because we’re not tilting at windmills here. (We love windmills, after all.) We’re tilting at billions of dollars backing a highly toxic project that could spell real disaster in our region.

Bryce Oates is a farmer, father, writer, and rural economic development entrepreneur. He works with his family to raise organic vegetables, beef, lamb, chickens, goats and manage the bottomland forest woodlot in Western Missouri. He has helped to launch numerous social enterprises, including a sustainable wood processing cooperative, a dairy goat cheese processing facility, and a conservation-based land management company that incentivizes carbon sequestration in forests and grasslands. Bryce currently co-owns the Root Cellar Grocery in Downtown Columbia, Missouri, a local food store that operates a weekly produce subscription program called the Missouri Bounty Box. Bryce, along with 135 other farmers, sells his produce through this program.

The post HOMEGROWN Life: What Could Have Been (and What I Hope Won’t Be) appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.

It’s spring. You can’t tell by the weather since, most mornings, the kitchen-window thermometer is still showing temps in the 20-somethings when I’m busy filling milk bottles for five babes. But other signs of spring are evident as I glance out that same kitchen window and see six lambs sitting atop their mamas or wandering around the sheep pen, waiting—patiently or not so patiently—for me to appear and open the gate to the pasture. Spring has blown into full-born sweetness in the barn, as three new goat kids nicker away in between munching on the bits of alfalfa and grain left over from their evening feeding. They, too, are anxious for bottles full of their mamas’ milk.

Dollie, my sweet Saanen girl, got spring rolling here back on March 10 when that thermometer was showing 10, and 30-mile-per-hour winds were blowing straight out of the north. She delivered twin girls, Seashell (Shelly) and Periwinkle (I’ve taken to calling her Winkydoodle). Deliveries followed soon after in the sheep barn, a single lamb I call Harp, on another brutally cold day, followed by Mairead’s delivery on St. Patrick’s Day—one of whom, of course, I call Guinness. On March 18, Colleen presented me at dawn with a set of twin girls, and finally, on Easter Sunday, my gorgeous Maeve brought two more coal black twins into this life, a boy and a girl. Who needs crocuses when you can have six lambs, all black, appear on the landscape? They are like a breath of fresh air after the long—and I mean long, and still not letting up—winter.

I now label the times of my day BM (Before Milking) and AM (After Milking). At 4:30—I know, I’m a lazy farmer; 4:30 a.m. is midafternoon for some folks—it all starts with filling stainless milk buckets with the richest, creamiest, freshest-tasting milk I’ve ever had. I’m not saying that just because it’s from my girls. Honestly. I had never tasted goat milk in my life before I decided to take that left turn to Seabreeze Farm on Open Farm Day four years ago and took a chance on buying a quart. I am not what you would call an adventurous eater. I know it’s probably good, but I just can’t get past those little suction cups on octopi, and I wouldn’t eat sour cream until I was a teenager because of the name. I love sour cream now, although I’ve replaced it with goat’s milk yogurt because, frankly, my life literally revolves around goat milk.

Two of the farm’s newest residents

So, BM in the creamery: There are bottles and buckets and kettles and strainers and molds and ladles and thermometers and probably something I’ve forgotten, all needing to be set up. Moving to the barn, there are hayracks and water buckets to be filled and three goat babes to feed, who, after what must seem like an endless night, are clamoring for warm milk to fill the empty space in their tender baby rumen bellies.

When milking begins, Dollie is first, much to Frannie’s dismay. Last year Frannie was herd queen and bounded out of the gate, her status firmly intact. This year Dollie gently reminds Frannie every morning, with a gentle nod of her head, that she’s queen now. It rotates from year to year. With Dollie’s milk safely in the bucket and hanging on the weighing hook, Frannie gets her turn. There’s just no other way to say it except, “Katie bar the door,” when Frannie comes out of the stall. All three kids stand in their adjoining stall, tiny heads poking out as they nibble on bits of alfalfa, taking it all in. I swear they’re whispering to each other, “Hey, did you see that backflip?”

Long-legged Bingo

AM, I spend time filling my own belly with fresh-brewed coffee that’s been sitting safely out of reach, topped with a splash of warm milk straight from the bucket. I sit on the milking stand, coffee tucked, with kids running the length of the barn, bouncing off the hay bales or shaving bundles or me. Little Bingo, Frannie’s boy, born at 14 pounds with the longest legs I’ve ever seen, loves to stretch himself across my lap. I should call him Spiderman, but I call him Bingo for “legs eleven,” or what they call number 11 in Bingo. He’ll be going to live on my cousin’s farm in Vermont and joining the herd there. Oak Knoll is a special place, I call it a dairy with a heart.

With the whole world at times seeming to be going to hell in a hand basket, I am so grateful to have lambs to hug and goat babes to watch run and do that sideways-jump thing they do. When the Boston Marathon bombings were announced and the ensuing chase was being broadcast 24/7, I retreated to the barn and sat with the girls listening to WBACH. They were all raised on classical; we don’t listen to news in the barn. The rest of the world goes away. They’ve been playing a lot of lullabies on WBACH lately, and I find that fitting for the times. I know I, for one, could use some soothing when the world feels out of control and ramped up on fear. My girls give me sweet wholesome milk, and I like to think it’s because the only fear they know is an empty water bucket or a hayrack filled with hay they don’t like the taste of. Sitting in the barn or wandering out in the pasture, I’m not afraid when two bottle lambs come running up to me, just wanting to be picked up. For a brief time, my world is theirs, and I’m reminded how simple it can be.

Bittersweet’s tiniest lamb, born on Easter Sunday

In between BM and AM, there is the stuff of daily living. With it comes a lot of responsibility, a lot of fear, a lot of pressure. I’d like to think that we all can imagine going out to the pasture and picking up a tiny lamb and feeling better, just for having done that. If you don’t have a lamb to hug, hug someone next to you. I’m lucky to have my pick of lambs and kids and goat moms and sheep moms and good old Jack Fergus to keep me grounded in hugs. I hope this spring will be the beginning of folks finding new ways to hug and be hugged as we move through this life together.

These spring births remind me that life goes on, no matter what else is happening in the world. Winter doesn’t seem so cold and long when it ends in the gift of lambs and kids. Harsh winds aren’t so forbidding when you’ve got a tiny warm lamb to hold and rock to sleep, with a full belly and a lullaby. I haven’t yet named the tiniest lamb of all, born on Easter Sunday. Maybe she’s my own personal Lullaby.

Dyan Redick describes herself as “an accidental farmer with a purpose.” Her farm, located on the St. George peninsula of Maine, is a certified Maine State Dairy offering cheeses made with milk from a registered Saanen goat herd, a seasonal farm stand full of wool from a Romney cross flock, goat milk soap, lavender, woolens, and whatever else strikes Dyan’s fancy. Bittersweet Heritage Farm is an extension of her belief that we should all gain a better understanding of our food source, our connection to where we live, and to the animals with whom we share the earth.

ALL PHOTOS: BITTERSWEET HERITAGE FARM

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Part of my day job description includes putting together construction documents on how to install drip irrigation. Usually these documents are for huge sites with extensive systems involving thousands of feet of piping, dozens of valves, and sometimes multiple controllers.

You’re probably scratching your head trying to make sense of what you just read. That’s OK because the typical home garden is not going to require all of this fancy talk, but it will require a few necessary items to work well.

Choosing Your System

I like to set my irrigation system and forget it, meaning I really don’t want to think about watering that much. Of course, having a garden that takes several hours to water every other day is exactly the reason I don’t want to think about it. But even with smaller gardens, you might want to consider drip irrigation. Sometimes life gets busy, and you might not be able to water for a few days. If you had automatic irrigation, you wouldn’t have to worry about losing the garden you had spent months nurturing.

I’m also of the mind that you should have a system even if you don’t need it. This was highlighted last summer with the severe drought in the Midwest. My mom, who lives in Ohio, depends on summer rains to water her garden, but last year the rains never came. The heat did, though. She had to spend large amounts of her time  watering by hand just to keep everything alive. When you don’t need automatic irrigation, you can just turn it off. But when you do need it, it’s nice to be able to turn it back on and let it do its thing.

With so many different types of irrigation, how in the world do you choose one? My first word of advice is to put down the preassembled garden drip irrigation kit at the big box store. Every garden site is unique, and those kits do very little to accommodate even the average one. Second, you’ll need to figure out if you want drip irrigation or overhead irrigation. (I won’t be covering the latter here; more on my preference for drip below.)

I recommend drip for several reasons. First, it is low flow, and the water goes directly on the soil at the rate the soil can absorb it. This reduces evaporation and eliminates drift from wind. It also reduces fungal diseases that can be caused by overhead watering, and it’s less likely to cause puddling and soil erosion. In addition, you’re less likely to have weeds when you control where the water is going, since weeds have a tendency to congregate at the water source rather than spreading out across your entire bed. The downside of drip, however, is that it can be clunky to handle and gets in the way of digging, hoeing, and raking the soil. Also, it doesn’t last as long as overhead, which is generally hard pipe that’s buried, and has to be checked over thoroughly before every season. To me, however, the savings in water and money are well worth these minor headaches.

Designing and Installing

You will either need to draw up a site plan of the area you want to irrigate or get some construction marking paint (spray paint that can be applied when the can is upside down, usually available in fluorescent colors). The main purpose of this is to find out how much PVC irrigation pipe you’ll need between your water source and the places you want to water. Generally, the pipe only needs to run to the end of each bed that’s closest to your water source. Rainbird, a popular irrigation supply company, has some design manuals you can use to help with your irrigation layout.

Basic valve setup (click photo to enlarge)

Stick with 3/4-inch schedule 40 PVC pipe unless you’re planning to have a really large area on drip or you’re using spray. Then you’ll need to do pressure loss calculations, but I’m not going to go into that here (two words: advanced math). Pipe is pretty cheap, so if you purchase more than you need, which you will, you won’t break the bank. In addition to the pipe, you’ll also need joints (elbows, tees, 4-way, couplers, et cetera). This is why a drawing is helpful. Keep in mind that any turns in the pipe usually will have to be at 90 degrees.

The photo above shows how we set up our valves. The valves are what turns the water on and off automatically; there’s a manual switch, as well. The valves are connected by low-voltage wire to an irrigation timer, also known as a controller, located in our water tower. When you enlarge the picture, you can see the wires that will connect on the top of the valve (they haven’t been hooked up yet in this photo). If you have just a few raised beds, you’ll probably need only one valve. We have three different watering zones—fruit trees, vegetable beds (we need two valves due to water-pressure loss), and drought-tolerant landscape—all of which require different watering schedules, which is why we need four valves for our backyard.

It might look complicated, but once you have all of the parts you need, it’s really not. Everything goes together rather quickly. In my opinion, the hardest part of installing irrigation is digging the trenches for the pipe and electrical wires.

For the threaded joints, you’ll want to purchase plumbers/Teflon tape: a thin, relatively stretchy white material that’s not sticky to the touch. You’ll use this to wrap the threads in the same direction you’ll screw on the fitting. This tape fills in any gaps in the threads, sealing it from leaking. Wrap it around about three times but don’t let it extend past the end of the threads, as it can clog your system if a small piece breaks off. For the PVC slip joints, you’ll want to get pipe cement and primer. Some people claim you can skip the primer, but that’s only true for systems that won’t be pressurized. With drip systems, the lines will have pressure when they’re on, so make sure to use primer first; otherwise, you’ll end up with a lot of leaks that you can’t always fix. Primer is generally purple in color. You apply it first to the inside of the connector and to the outside of the pipe. Allow it to dry a bit. Then apply the cement in the same fashion and insert the pipe into the connector. It should have a firm hold and finish connecting within a few minutes, but don’t plan on running water through your system for at least 24 hours, giving the joint to cure.

Irrigation hookup at each bed (click photo to enlarge)

Now you’ll want to run pipe to your beds. Connect the pipes with female slip joints and cement. I prefer to locate the pipe riser for each bed on the outside of the bed, although some folks prefer to put them on the inside. If the bed is already in place and filled, you’ll have to put it on the outside. The photo at left shows what you’ll need for each bed. The ball valve is important because it allows you to turn off irrigation to individual beds when a given bed isn’t in use. I like to use the threaded gray risers, as they contain carbon to help make them more resistant to UV. You can use PVC, though, if you want to. Just remember that if you use the threaded pipe, you’ll need elbows, with one end being threaded.

Now that you’ve got water to your beds, you’ll want to get the dripline down in your bed. There are several options as far as the types of line you can use. I personally like dripline with inline emitters because it’s easier to handle. You can get this in 1/2-inch and 1/4-inch sizes. For each of these sizes, there are different emitter spacings within the line. The 1/2-inch dripline’s smallest spacing is 12 inches, which might be too far apart for vegetable beds. The 1/4-inch size comes in 6-inch spacing, so you might want to go with that. Some people like to use those porous soaker lines, which look like black spongy material that weeps water when turned on. If you have hard water or even just well water, this type of line clogs really easily, and you’ll need to replace it before the season is over. (Trust me, I’ve had to do this.) The inline emitter dripline uses turbulent flow to help keep the emitters from clogging.

Another option is drip tape. Drip tape is inexpensive and puts a good amount of water down in a relatively short time frame. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last long. By our second season, we spent a good portion of our time repairing blown sections of it. It also requires a much lower water pressure to run correctly, which requires difficult-to-find pressure regulators.

Once you figure out which type of dripline you want to use, you’ll need to lay out how you want to water it. I prefer to run the water source on the end of the long side of the bed versus the center of the short side. From the water source, you’ll run 1/2-inch poly across the short side and then cap it. At every 6- to 9-inch spacing (spacing is according to your personal preference and also depends on the width of your bed) you’ll insert a barbed 1/4-inch tubing connector. There’s a poly tubing hole punch gun that makes this job much easier. Connect 1/4-inch dripline tubing to the barbed connector and run it to the end of the bed. Crimp the end and stake it down. You can buy end clamps or just use zip ties.

One more thing you’ll need to consider: When dealing with poly tubing, you want to use either universal fittings or fittings that are the same brand as your tubing. Different manufacturers vary the size of the tubing ever so slightly, so fittings from one manufacturer will not work on another’s tubing unless it’s truly universal. The links in the following list are meant to give you an idea of what you’re looking for. Since I’ve included different brands and sources, the items don’t necessarily all work together. Your best option is to purchase everything from the same store, which generally will offer compatible parts.

Basic Supplies for Automatic Drip Irrigation

• Controller/irrigation timer
• Sprinkler wire with wire splice connectors
• Antisiphon valve with atmospheric vacuum breaker and pressure regulating filter
• 3/4″ PVC pipe
• Various 3/4″ PVC connectors: couplers, elbows, tees, risers, adapter
• Teflon tape
• PVC primer
• PVC cement
• Supplies to connect to water source
• 3/4″ ball valve (one per bed)
• 1/2″ poly tubing compression adaptor (one per bed)
• 1/2″ poly tubing
• 1/4″ dripline
• Punch gun
• 1/4″ barbed connectors
• End clamps
• Stakes

A Word on Controllers

With controllers, you can go cheap or you can go expensive. Either way, it probably will be your most expensive piece of irrigation equipment. The more costly a controller is, the more features it will have, such as being able to attach rain sensors, soil moisture sensors, or more programs and stations. The one I linked to above is the one that I own. I’ve been very happy with it. It has a rain delay and a rain-shutoff switch so I can turn it off during the winter. When it’s time to run it again, it saves all of my previous programs. The programming is relatively easy to figure out, as well.

One thing I will caution you against is getting battery-operated controllers that double as valves. In my opinion (and experience), these are not reliable and go out regularly. The worst is when you’re on vacation and the battery goes out with the valve open. Yeah, this happens more often than you’d think.

My friends in college used to call me a Renaissance woman. I was always doing something crafty, creative, or utilitarian. I still am. My focus these days, instead of arts and crafts, has been farming as much of my urban quarter-acre as humanly possible. Along with my husband, I run Dog Island Farm, in the SF Bay Area. We raise chickens, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, and a kid. We’re always keeping busy. If I’m not out in the yard, I’m in the kitchen making something from scratch. Homemade always tastes better!

ALL PHOTOS: COURTESY OF RACHEL

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That’s my mantra these days, as I begin to jump out of my skin living the joys of the farming life. Waiting for winter to end. Waiting for the ground to dry so it can be worked. Waiting for the temperatures to climb. Waiting.

February and March were just brutal, weather-wise, here on the farm. We got slammed with multiple snow-, ice-, sleet-, hail-, and rainstorms. Couple those events with a lambing and calving schedule set for a March 1 target date, and life became a drag. Cutting and hauling wood in the knee-deep snow. Feeding hay in the knee-deep mud below a foot of knee-deep snow. It was, in the words of many “modern farmers” who speak about the days before tractors and combines, total and complete drudgery.

Look at me, playing the role of the complaining farmer. It’s easy to become this way when your plans are constantly thwarted by Mother Nature’s reality. Turning the clock forward a few months, I know I’ll be harvesting peppers and tomatoes. I know I’ll be looking for a cool breeze. But right now I want a few 70-degree days and a wind to dry out the ground. I need to get my potatoes planted very soon.

In my more logical times, I know that all of this moisture is great. The ponds and streams are full for the first time in more than two years. It’s just that last year I had already planted peppers and tomatoes by now—some of them anyway and, yes, it was a ridiculous gamble—but they made it.

I know we’re really not “behind.” Our average last frost date is actually a couple more weeks out. And on the “Happy Days, It’s Spring Again” front, I did just eat a dandelion salad for dinner last night, after all. Coming soon will be the bluebells in the woods, morels on the dinner table, and crappie spawning in the river. Spring is a great time of year. It’s just hard to fit it all in.

So I raise my glass to you, Old Man Winter. Thanks for the moisture. We dearly needed it. Now move along north there, like you know you need to. We’ll see you again soon enough. We’ve got potatoes to plant.

Bryce Oates is a farmer, father, writer, and rural economic development entrepreneur. He works with his family to raise organic vegetables, beef, lamb, chickens, goats and manage the bottomland forest woodlot in Western Missouri. He has helped to launch numerous social enterprises, including a sustainable wood processing cooperative, a dairy goat cheese processing facility, and a conservation-based land management company that incentivizes carbon sequestration in forests and grasslands. Bryce currently co-owns the Root Cellar Grocery in Downtown Columbia, Missouri, a local food store that operates a weekly produce subscription program called the Missouri Bounty Box. Bryce, along with 135 other farmers, sells his produce through this program.

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Living in a fishing village, I am surrounded by men and women who, like me, spend their lives wading in muck—only theirs is generated by fresh catches rather than by some breed of domesticated beast. Their days are filled with backbreaking work, lifting heavy traps full of prized crustaceans rather than bales of fresh local-cut hay. They haul nets laden with fish or shrimp rather than bucketloads of grain or water. They slog around in muck boots and Grundens rather than Carhartt’s and, well, muck boots. Farmers layer their Carhartt’s over a barn sweater so full of holes you wonder how it has any warming effect left. Fishermen cover their sweaters, made of sturdy Maine-grown wool full of “grease” to shed the sea spray, under waterproof bibs.

A fisherman’s life is guided by the pounding sea and its ever-changing highs and lows. A monument in my town of Port Clyde attests to lives lost while incurring her wrath or as the result of something gone terribly wrong. Farmers, too, have endured tragic loss from accidents and hardships. Our local St. George and Oceanview Granges stand as monuments to those who have gone before us, tilling the soil, tending flocks and herds, gathering up the harvest in the fall.

The lives of farmers and fishermen are inextricably interwoven. Mother Nature plays the largest role in whether a fisherman is successful in his catches, much to the consternation of the scientists who try and sort out patterns of aquatic life. So it is with the farmer, who basically hopes and prays that this season won’t bring floods or winds or drought or bugs or fungus or disease while the Cooperative Extension Agency wrestles with Mother Nature’s latest invention.

For fishermen, inspiration comes in the form of an early morning sunrise over the bow of the boat while steaming out for the day’s catch. Likewise, the gentle stirring of warm fuzzy bodies bedded down in soft clean hay that’s brought on by the flick of a light switch nudges a farmer through one more day. Stamina to get up long before dawn’s early light, stamina to push through pain from aching muscles and tired bones, stamina to haul a trap or a net brimming with a prized catch, or buckets of water through waist-deep snow. Making a life, not just a living, in harmony with the change of seasons and taking each day as it comes, whether on dry ground or on water.

There’s a rhythm to it all. When I lived on the Chesapeake Bay, I would wake every morning at 3 a.m. when my neighbor on one side, Skipper, started his truck for the ride down to his boat, then again at 4 a.m. when Michael, the neighbor on the other side, followed. I’d lie there smiling with the day already starting in sync and then thankfully roll back over to dream of lambs and chickens and goats.

I once asked Michael what he would do if he couldn’t work the water on what had been his father’s old boat anymore. He just shook his head. As it turned out, he ended up selling the boat rather than sinking it and worked the rest of his short 46 years as a carpenter—a job that kept him firmly on the ground he had loved leaving behind every morning as a fisherman. Times have changed for fishermen and farmers both.

For me, there is a connection between the lives of those who make their living dependent on the land and those on the sea. I don’t think I could have been as happy as a farmer if my life wasn’t graced by waking to the sunrise over water. The thread of hardship, joy, and satisfaction binds farmer and fisherman together.

As the tides in the harbor rise and fall, so do the days unfold as I move from chore to chore. I am as dependent on this guarantee as I am on taking my next breath. I pick up my mail each day in my muck-covered boots at the Port Clyde Post Office, where I’m followed through the door by a fisherman fuming with the distinct odor of bait traps. It’s a blending of aromas, strengths, weaknesses, smiles, daily inspirations, and lives.

I love the strength of mountains, but I’m glad to be building this farm by the sea.

Dyan Redick describes herself as “an accidental farmer with a purpose.” Her farm, located on the St. George peninsula of Maine, is a certified Maine State Dairy offering cheeses made with milk from a registered Saanen goat herd, a seasonal farm stand full of wool from a Romney cross flock, goat milk soap, lavender, woolens, and whatever else strikes Dyan’s fancy. Bittersweet Heritage Farm is an extension of her belief that we should all gain a better understanding of our food source, our connection to where we live, and to the animals with whom we share the earth.

ALL PHOTOS: BITTERSWEET HERITAGE FARM

The post HOMEGROWN Life: The Farmer and the Fisherman appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.

Have you seen the latest big craze in animal feed? Livestock fodder from grain seed takes only about a week to grow and increases your feed by up to six times in weight. (So far, I’ve seen five but I hear six is possible.) It’s highly nutritious and provides 20 percent protein by dry weight. You can feed it to poultry, rabbits, ruminants, horses—just about any grass-loving livestock around.

When my friend Brande first told me about it, I wasn’t so sure. I had heard great things about it but had only seen these huge, incredibly expensive setups for large livestock operations. I hadn’t even thought it was possible to do fodder without one of those setups.

What in the hell was I thinking? Nowadays everything can be done DIY, so why not fodder? It would just require a bit more labor on my part.

There are really only three things you absolutely have to have: seed, water, and planting trays with drainage holes. There’s no need for soil or fertilizer. Because we have a mild climate, I’m just growing mine outside on a table. The best seed to use is barley, as it has the highest nutrition and protein of all the grain seeds. I can get an 80-pound bag of barley for just over $18. You can try to find hulled barley, but unhulled seems to work fine. When watering, I recapture the drainage water to reuse.

Cleaned barley with hulls intact (i.e., unhulled)

Before you start making your fodder, you need to soak the barley for six to eight hours in water. This degrades germination inhibitors in the seeds (also why you should soak peas and legumes before planting). You only want to put about half an inch of barley in your tray. It really does swell up, and I found that, with 3 pounds of barley, the tray was busting at the walls. You want to cover the barley with enough water so that it remains covered when it expands.

Soaking barley in a bucket

Once your barley is done soaking, pour the seed and water into your tray and rinse the seed. To help encourage germination, cover your tray so that it remains dark. I just use a burlap sack. The photo above shows the barley one day after soaking. Small root tips are beginning to show up at the ends of the seed.

Just starting to germinate

Water your seed two to three times a day. You want to keep it from drying out too much. By the second day after soaking, you’ll start to see more of the roots.

At this point, you’ll begin to see the seeds expand in size.

The third day after soaking, small bits of green will poke their heads out of the layer of seeds and roots. This green stuff will soon be growing so fast you can almost see it lengthen. At this point, you’ll want to uncover your fodder to help the grass blades develop chlorophyll and energy.

Time to uncover the seed so that it gets light.

On the fourth day after soaking, you’ll see the beginning of a nice little green carpet. It’s not much yet, but the following day you’ll be amazed.

A nice green layer is beginning to form.

Day 5, and it’s starting to look like turf. Keep watering at least twice a day.

Once it reaches this point, it grows quickly.

By day 6, you’re almost ready to feed it. Supposedly this is when the grass’s nutrition begins to peak.

From day 6 to day 7, the fodder is at its most nutritious.

On day 7, it’s time to feed your animals. You can see the awesome layers of roots, seed, and grass in the photo below. Poultry and ruminants will consume all of these parts. Rabbits generally only like the greens.

Roots, seed, and leaf in one tidy package

I started with 3 pounds of seed and produced nearly 15 pounds of fodder. It took my hens a couple of days to eat one tray’s worth. If you start a new tray every day or every couple of days, you’ll have a constant supply of fodder to feed your brood.

My friends in college used to call me a Renaissance woman. I was always doing something crafty, creative, or utilitarian. I still am. My focus these days, instead of arts and crafts, has been farming as much of my urban quarter-acre as humanly possible. Along with my husband, I run Dog Island Farm, in the SF Bay Area. We raise chickens, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, and a kid. We’re always keeping busy. If I’m not out in the yard, I’m in the kitchen making something from scratch. Homemade always tastes better!

ALL PHOTOS: COURTESY OF RACHEL

The post HOMEGROWN Life: What the Fodder?! The Latest in Cheap and Easy Livestock Feed appeared first on www.HOMEGROWN.org.